Archive for September 9th, 2010

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero, has started writing and speaking about his project. When I heard about the man and read he was a “Sufi” Muslim, I had wondered how a Sufi could make such explosive political statements as “Osama bin Laden was made in USA,” US “was accessory to the crimes” of 9/11 or “that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims.”

A Sufi Muslim does not take the words of Allah or Prophet Muhammad literally when interpreting the Qur’an or Hadith respectively. Imam Abdul Rauf does. In a letter to the New York Times in 1977, he reminded his “fellow Arabs” (Where is the inclusiveness?) in Palestine what Prophet Muhammad did in order to conquer Mecca. He did not recant his views when Wall Street Journal contacted him a week ago.

The first Muslims who apostatized were treated well. They had religious freedom because Prophet Muhammad had no military power to force them revert to Islam or be killed. This is proof the verse most Muslim scholars quote to tout Islam’s provision for religious freedom has been abrogated because later Prophet Muhammad required non-Muslims to embrace Islam and established the law of apostasy that requires the death of apostates. Why would prominent Muslim scholars and organizations mislead the public?

He knows Shariah Law and religious freedom is an oxymoron. He doesn’t want the public to know. Why would he try his pilot project in the United States while he can do the same in Saudi Arabic where, even minority Muslim sects, let alone non-Muslims, have no religious freedom? He should travel the Muslim world and lecture on protecting “minority rights.” He should take his “education opportunities” to Afghanistan where Taliban has been destroying schools and killing children. No Islamic country, a country governed through Shariah Law, has allowed its “citizens to participate in their own governance.”

Imam Abdul Rauf is trying to modernize Islam and exercising Tauriyya. Here is the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre of Jordan on Islamic modernism:

Muslims have every right to build mosques in the United States. However, I am concerned about Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and the proposed location of his “community center.” His recent statements show he knows Islamic teachings but he is exercising Tauriya. There is no such thing in authentic Islam as what he is trying to achieve. His public statements have made it very evident he is not a Sufi Muslim. He has been using Sufism as a cover. This man knows very well no one who embraces the Qur’an’s teachings and adheres to Prophet Muhammad’s sayings and deeds can build a bridge with people who believe in human rights and religious freedom. He doesn’t believe in these ideals, just maximizing them to advance his cause of spreading Islam in the West. In the words of a prominent Muslim scholar who, unlike Imam Abdul Rauf, is unashamed of Islamic teachings, “‘Democracy, freedom, and human rights have no place’ in Islam.”